Summer Reading List

Do you ever get lost in bliss when browsing up and down the aisles in a book store? It’s my favorite place to lose track of time! Whether it’s Barnes and Nobles, used book stores (my favorite), or even just the book section at Target, I live for finding new books. I gave the kindle a go a while back, but there is just something about the look, feel, and smell of a book. I may need to start building that bookshelf wall that I’ve been dreaming of in my mind for the past decade. Just for fun, here are a few of my favorite Pinterest inspirations. You can follow me on Pinterest HERE. Photo sources here and here.

Anywho, unless my husband wakes up and decides there is nothing he’d rather do than break his back for a few weeks to get me the bookshelf of my dreams, it’s not gonna happen. So I’ll continue overflowing my humble bookshelf until it can’t hold anymore. I was lurking around Target this weekend and loaded up my cart with all new reads for this month. I’ve really been tending towards thrillers and mysteries, they’re so good! I’m not sure why we as human beings love being held in a state of suspense for days while reading, but I love it. I’ve included all of the excerpts from Good Reads that I read before buying each of these. If you’re on Good Reads, add me! I would love to see what you’re reading.

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins: When I read The Girl on the Train I literally couldn’t put it down. I’m pretty sure that I read it in about 6 hours of non-stop page turning. I have high hopes that this book will be the same, twists, suspense, and mystery! Synopsis – A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: When I see that a book has won the Pulitzer Prize, it is an instant “well obviously I need to read that as soon as possible”. Once I read that it’s set in Paris and centers around World War II, I had to get it! Synopsis – Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Paper Towns by John Green: Have you read The Fault in Our Stars? I cried like a baby when I read it…like ugly cried. It was so good and I can’t wait to read Paper Towns, especially since it’s set in my city! I’m guessing Lake Eola will come up a few times. Synopsis – Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware: This is another book that I grabbed based on my love for an earlier book by an author. I read In a Dark, Dark Wood a few years ago while traveling for work and I really enjoyed it. I recommend it if you’re in the mood for a relatively quick read and a suspenseful tale! Synopsis – In this tightly wound story, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda: Little known fact; I wanted to be an FBI Profiler when I was in high school. I read every true crime novel I could get my hands on. Ann Rule and John Douglas were my heroes, and I devoured their books every week. This novel seems to be along those lines and I can’t wait to dig in. Synopsis – It’s been ten years since Nicolette Farrell left her rural hometown after her best friend, Corinne, disappeared from Cooley Ridge without a trace. Back again to tie up loose ends and care for her ailing father, Nic is soon plunged into a shocking drama that reawakens Corinne’s case and breaks open old wounds long since stitched. The decade-old investigation focused on Nic, her brother Daniel, boyfriend Tyler, and Corinne’s boyfriend Jackson. Since then, only Nic has left Cooley Ridge. Daniel and his wife, Laura, are expecting a baby; Jackson works at the town bar; and Tyler is dating Annaleise Carter, Nic’s younger neighbor and the group’s alibi the night Corinne disappeared. Then, within days of Nic’s return, Annaleise goes missing. Told backwards—Day 15 to Day 1—from the time Annaleise goes missing, Nic works to unravel the truth about her younger neighbor’s disappearance, revealing shocking truths about her friends, her family, and what really happened to Corinne that night ten years ago.